My Zen Arcade

Its OK, we killed our daughter because of our religion.  Shouldn’t we get a free pass?

A day before Madeline died, according to the criminal complaint, the father wrote an e-mail with the headline, “Help our daughter needs emergency prayer!!!!.” It said his daughter was “very weak and pale at the moment with hardly any strength.”

Fuck you.

So, in case you missed it, yes, we know, we were lied to, and have continually been lied to, about the Iraq war.
Here’s a couple snippets from the NYT article.

Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

–
John C. Garrett is a retired Marine colonel and unpaid analyst for Fox News TV and radio. He is also a lobbyist at Patton Boggs who helps firms win Pentagon contracts, including in Iraq

At the same time, in e-mail messages to the Pentagon, Mr. Garrett displayed an eagerness to be supportive with his television and radio commentary. “Please let me know if you have any specific points you want covered or that you would prefer to downplay,” he wrote in January 2007, before President Bush went on TV to describe the surge strategy in Iraq.

–
A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis.

“It was them saying, ‘We need to stick our hands up your back and move your mouth for you,’ ” Robert S. Bevelacqua, a retired Green Beret and former Fox News analyst, said.

–

Kenneth Allard, a former NBC military analyst who has taught information warfare at the National Defense University, said the campaign amounted to a sophisticated information operation. “This was a coherent, active policy,” he said.

As conditions in Iraq deteriorated, Mr. Allard recalled, he saw a yawning gap between what analysts were told in private briefings and what subsequent inquiries and books later revealed.

“Night and day,” Mr. Allard said, “I felt we’d been hosed.”

More than anything, this shows the absolute contempt the Bush Administration feels towards the people they serve.

But we knew that.

And how horrible the media is for helping them.

And we knew that too.

Well, some of us did.

Of course.  Because we always think about the children.

On the plus side, it looks like the states are about the tell GW to go to hell.  It stuns me that an elected official would put restrictions on how states dole out healthcare.  Oh, right, don’t want to screw those big insurance companies that donate so much money and have such powerful lobbyists.

GAO says Bush violated federal law (again)

The Bush administration violated federal law last year when it restricted states’ ability to provide health insurance to children of middle-income families, and its new policy is therefore unenforceable, lawyers from the Government Accountability Office said Friday.

it should be noted that my feelings towards Scientology aren’t significantly different than my feelings towards any other religion.  The only differences are:

1. Scientology is blatant and shameless in requiring money if you want salvation (most churches try to hide this best they can)
2. Scientology promises super-power (most churches say they have super-powers, but only a few can get them, no matter how hard others may try)
3. Scientology is more than happy to abuse the legal system to keep 1 & 2 secret.

Anyhow, Wikileaks has given the big Fuck You to L. Ron and his abusive crew and published over 500 pages of secret documents comprising the hidden bibles of Scientology (more or less). 

And yes, there are super-powers.  If you can stomach it all, the full documents can be found here

Ahhh…the horrors never end.  I hadn’t heard about this one.

Short version: Parentsw believe crazy-ass shit and so they don’t do what parents are supposed to do and just let their child die because doing what they are supposed to do would conflict with their flavor of crazy.

Well, the other 3 kids have been removed from the Neumann home during the investigation.  What keeps coming up is how there wasn’t any ‘intent’ on the parents part.  They honestly thought they were doing the right thing.

Parents who physically abuse their children often say the same.  ‘They had to learn a lesson’ or ‘my parents did the same to me’. 

Maybe these people shouldn’t go to jail.

They should be committed to a psychiatric hospital and never have their kids back.

They called their church the night before

On the night before 11-year-old Madeline Kara Neumann died of complications from untreated diabetes, her parents did not call a doctor. Instead, Dale and Leilani Neumann prayed over the telephone Saturday with the founder of a religious Web site named americaslastdays.com

So lets make sure the record is straight. She was very sick. The parents knew she was. Experts say she’d probably been getting sicker and sicker for a month.
The parents knew it was bad.
So they prayed instead of getting her medical attention.
Criminal.
Child abuse.
Schitzophrenia.

One Higher Power: Why does the media only cover when prayer goes wrong

Where is the ABC News report of the higher power saving my grandfather’s life from a diabetic episode based on a “hunch” - a “still, small voice” my uncle heard and heeded?

Well, first off, the media often does these kind of human interest stories, so lets not act all oppressed.
Second, I’m sorry, exactly how is this comparable to a little girl being murdered by her parent’s craziness?
Third, does it not strike you as, perhaps, contradictory that god saved your grandfather but not this little girl?
Oh, wait, perhaps neither event is related to god whatsoever!
W00t!
A breakthrough!

Yeah, why aren’t they covering all sides of everything?
A kid drinks drano and dies.
Why doesn’t the media show how well draino unclogged my pipes?
A person dies in a car accident.
Why doesn’t the media cover everyone who walks away from an accident?

Look, you can have your crazy. Thats your business, so long as you don’t push your crazy on others.
But lets not expect the media to go covering all your ‘miracles’.
(oh, and for the record, the media gives a free ride to religion, as a rule…but when it kills someone, well, it has to be called to task.)

Again, we take kids away from parents all the time. But if ‘god’ or ‘faith’ enter into it, they are untouchable.
Wisconsin’s faith-based healing law

Peters is referring to state statute 948.03(6), against failing to act to protect children from bodily harm. It contains an exemption for what it refers to as ” Treatment through prayer.” To wit: “A person is not guilty of an offense under this section solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing in accordance with the religious method of healing … in lieu of medical or surgical treatment.”

911 call. Aunt knew child was very sick. Parents must have.
A couple of people have said that, if they parents didn’t know how sick Kara was, they aren’t really responsible. I believe that, by the time the Aunt was calling, the girl MUST have been very sick for days.